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Paul O’Neill To Make BTCC Return At Croft

Paul O’Neill looks set to make his return to the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship as the series heads to Croft for Round Five of the season.

Paul O’Neill will be driving for Speedworks Motorsport, replacing current driver, Tony Hughes who is unable to compete during the next round in the NGTC-specification Toyota Avensis.

This will be O’Neill’s first appearance since the final round of the 2011 season when he raced the S2000-specification Chevrolet Cruze for Tech-Speed. Since then Paul’s taken up a new role of track reported for ITV but he’s glad to get back behind the wheel of a BTCC car and is relishing the opportunity.

“I spoke to Tony at one of the events earlier in the year and he asked if I’d like to drive the car at Croft as he wasn’t able to be there,” Paul explained. “It’s a chance for me to return to the grid, but I don’t want to just jump in the car for a weekend of racing, I want to do a good job. Speedworks is a good team, Carlube is going to be playing a big part in the event and I’ll be keeping a video diary for ITV, so hopefully we can have a strong weekend.”

O’Neill knows that it’s going to be a tough weekend ahead as it will be the first time that he has driven an NGTC-specification car but he believes that he can get good results from the Toyota Avensis.

“My target is to run in the midfield but obviously the dream, as ever, is to finish on the podium. Although that is possible, I know it will be massive long shot. I’ve done a lot of things in this life that have been a long shot and sometimes they have come off, so I’ll go there to enjoy myself and see what we come away with.”